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Esa-Pekka Salonen Among my most-read blogs is “What’s An Orchestra For?" – Mulling Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Resignation from the San Francisco Symphony.” I posted it on March 26, 2024, and it still attracts readers practically every day. The topic is the abrupt departure of a genuine music director propagating a tangible and timely artistic vision. I wrote that this … [Read more...] about What’s An Orchestra For? – Mulling Salonen’s Resignation and a Dispiriting San Francisco Sequel 

I felt impelled to write the long essay that follows after discovering Frank Costigliola's acclaimed new biography of George Kennan. The initial topic is "the most extreme display of public effrontery I have ever encountered" -- Kennan excoriating my fellow students at Swarthmore College in 1967, then refusing to take questions. My eventual topic is today's students, whom I … [Read more...] about Re-Encountering George Kennan — and “From the River to the Sea!”

Last Friday’s “Wall Street Journal” carried my review of a new memoir by Nancy Shear: "I Knew the Man Who Knew Brahms." Its central topic is Leopold Stokowski, whom Shear knew intimately for decades. I write in part: One of the most annoying claims ever uttered by a symphonic conductor came from the lips of Riccardo Muti in 2017. “The level of orchestras in the world has … [Read more...] about Remembering Leopold Stokowski

In the wake of the death of the pianist Alfred Brendel on June 16, I notice a sharp uptick in viewers of my 2016 "Wall Street Journal" review of Brendel's collected writings, my main interest being Brendel and Franz Schubert. I reproduce an excerpt from my review below. You can read the whole thing here: In the Schubert essays here collected, Mr. Brendel hones a metaphor … [Read more...] about Alfred Brendel (1931-2025)